On the afternoon of March 25, 1911, a fire broke out in the 10-floor Asch Building, a block east of Manhattan's Washington Square. This is where 500 mostly young immigrant girls were producing shirts for the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. Within minutes, it spread to consume the building's upper three stories. Firemen at the scene were unable to rescue those trapped inside: their ladders weren't tall enough. Exits were locked, and the narrow fire escapes were inadequate. Panicked, many jumped from the windows to their deaths. People on the street watched in horror. The flames were under control in less than a half hour, but 146 people perished, 123 of them women. It was the worst disaster in the city's history.
Von Drehle's wide-angle approach allows him to portray the social, economic and political dynamics of pre-World War I New York. The story of the fire only begins to emerge halfway through his book.
In the first chapter, "Spirit of the Age," we are typically spared theories about the class struggle and its interaction with the rapidly increasing feminist movement.
Instead, we watch these forces at work on the streets of the Lower East Side as Von Drehle focuses on a common criminal, Lawrence Ferrone, a.k.a. Charley Rose. He was hired on September 10, 1909 to beat up Clara Lemlich, an eloquent, fearless garment worker leading a strike at a blouse factory. She had arrived from Ukraine six years earlier, acquired skills as a draper, and joined the fledgling International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. Rose and a few of his buddies imposed a savage beating on the five-foot, baby-faced Clara. The police stood by, reckoning such assaults as usual. The fix was already in with Tammany Hall, the clique of neighbor...
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...s Triangle. The Fire That Changed America is an amazing example of history and story telling at its very best. I enjoyed his smooth writing style and his feel for detail. Soon, I start caring about the people of Triangle Shirtwaist factory, as I saw what brought them to America and what they tolerated once they got here. Most impressive, was Von Drehle's minute-by-minute, sometimes second-by-second explanation of the fire itself and the desperate efforts to escape it. You'll find yourself in the building with the people, thinking along with them about what to do as the flames draw closer.
David Von Drehle's Triangle. The Fire That Changed America. is a Secondary source. He is a Washington Post reporter and co-author of "Deadlock: The Inside Story of America's Closest Election." He is also the author of Among the Lowest of the Dead: Inside Death Row.
Mary Domsky-Abrams; one of the few to get out of the building, in the beginning of the fire, she recalls talking to one of the managers named: Bonstein. “ As he came near us on that fateful day, one girl asked him, “Mr. Bonstein, why theres is not water buckets?. In case of fire, there would be nothing with which to fight it.” He became enraged at our group of price committee members, and with inhuman anger replied” If you’ll burn, there’ll be something to put out the fire.”
The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire not only affected the city of New York, but also the rest of the country. It forever changed the way our country would look at safety regulations in factories and buildings. The fire proved to America what can and will happen if we over-look safety regulations and over-crowd buildings. Unfortunately, 146 lives are taken before we fully understand this concept.
The bombing of the World Trade Center was nicknamed “the Big One”, causing a sixteen alarm fire. FEMA’s Incident Commander (IC) arrived on the scene at 12:48 and began assessing what needed to be done: over 50,000 people needed to be evacuated, thick black smoke was filling the building and could not stopped, numerous people were trapped in elevators and personnel on the top floors were breaking glass raining it down on personnel on the ground.
In Night, Elie Wiesel descriptively portrays the Holocaust and the experiences he has in each part of his survival. From the ghettos to the Death March and liberation, Elie Wiesel shares his story of sadness and suffering. Specifically Wiesel speaks about his short experience in the Sighet ghetto, a historically accurate recount illustrating the poor living conditions, the Judenrat and Jewish life in the ghetto as well as the design and purpose of the two Sighet ghettos. Wiesel’s description of the Sighet ghettos demonstrates the similar characteristics between the Sighet ghetto and other ghettos in Germany and in German-annexed territories.
The Triangle based on the Triangle Waist Company Factory fire that took place on March 21, 1911 in New York City. Unlike Out of This Furnace the Triangle a true story that focus on the work condition of female immigrant workers who worked in a sweat-house in unsafe condition. At the time of the fire, this started on the eighth floor of the building. The owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company locked all the exit doors to assure that the worker may not leave or enter the factory ...
Think of the most beautiful city in world. You are walking the streets, taking in the scenery in complete admiration of a city built by men. Then one day you go to sleep, a few hours later you awaken, and that beautiful city is completely destroyed. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was one of the largest disasters in American history (“The Great Chicago”). After many failed attempts to put out the fire, people were left homeless and helpless to rebuild their city. Thankfully, after every tragedy there is always a recovery.
... Isaac Harris, and Max Steuer, just to name a few. Had Von Drehle not given these foreshadows, their importance in this event would have been lost. The epilogue was also an extremely important part of the book. Von Drehle uses this section to explain what happened to key figures after the fire, like Francis Perkins, who he explains came to become the first woman to hold a cabinet position under Franklin D. Roosevelt (Von Drehle, 263). Von Drehle also uses the epilogue to stress the importance the event played in shaping the meaning of liberalism in American politics, and how the event helped lead the Tammany machine from the old to the new (Von Drehle, 267). David Von Drehle did an amazing job of stressing the importance of the Triangle Fire had in the early 20th Century labor movement.
fires in the first week of October, on Saturday night, October 7, a blaze broke
James M.McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction 3rd ed. (McGraw-Hill 2001), p. 548-549.
To begin with, the author creates a violent imagery with describing what inmates would do to confessed communists on hopes to get a shorter sentence by “helping the nation”, “William Remington, was murdered by an inmate hoping to shorten his sentence by having killed a communist”(Miller 11). This murder was no ordinary murder, it was not an act of deliberate evil but rather of fear and paranoia that the nation was going through in the 1900’s. With the use of violent imagery, Miller tried to explicitly reveal the on-going
Hundreds of people died that day. A good portion of the women who worked at the factory died from the fire, while the others decided to jump out of the building to their death. At the end of the day, the families who had suffered a loss due to the fire received at most $75 as compensation. The corporation learned nothing from the disaster. However, this was an eye opener for some of the journalists who wanted to make a change.
Nearby Alfred Bello and Arthur Bradley were breaking into a factory. Bello was the lookout, and his exact location - inside or outside the bar - would be a point of concentration for the next twenty years. The police arrived at the bar within minutes. They took statements from Marins, Valenine, and Bello. Not one of them said they had seen Rubin Carter, one of Paterson’s most well-known citizens, at the scene. A police bulletin radioed officers to be on the lookout for a white car with two black men inside.
History textbooks seem to always focus on the advancements of civilization, often ignoring the humble beginnings in which these achievements derive. How the Other Half Lives by journalist-photographer Jacob A. Riis explores the streets of New York, using “muck-racking” to expose just how “the other half lives,” aside from the upbeat, rich, and flapper-girl filled nights so stereotypical to New York City in the 1800s. During this time, immigrants from all over the world flooded to the new-born city, bright-eyed and expecting new opportunities; little did they know, almost all of them will spend their lives in financial struggle, poverty, and crowded, disease-ridden tenements. Jacob A. Riis will photograph this poverty in How the Other Half Lives, hoping to bring awareness to the other half of New York.
The movie “Falling Down”, released in 1993, depicts an unemployed defense worker who becomes frustrated with society and unleashes that frustration on the Los Angeles community. The movie follows William through is destruction as well as the impact his actions has on other characters in the movie. It becomes apparent that the events and characters in the movie are ideal illustrations of the criminological theories anomie and social control.
Sheley, J. & Wright, J. (1995). In the line of fire. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.